Indies West Condominiums, Naples, Florida

KARNAK gave this condominium association the warranty they wanted plus the comfort and protection of a reflective roofing system.

Indies West is a unique condominium community located along Gulf Shore Boulevard in Naples, Florida. It was built with the vision of villa-style living on six acres with access to Moorings Beach and the bay. The community consists of 20 buildings, with 4 units in each building, each with an approximately 2,000 square foot roof for a total of 45,000 square feet.

Fort Myers, Florida-based West Coast Florida Enterprises, Inc. has serviced the roofs on the condos for many years. They installed the granulated modified roofs on the condos that, in 2018, were coming to the end of their 20- year warranty period. It was important to the condominium association to have a warranted roof system on their building, so they turned to Victor Littlejohn at West Coast Florida Enterprises to help them determine the best solution.

Having serviced the roof for the condominiums every year since the modified system was installed Littlejohn was familiar with the condition of the roof and knew that it would be a good candidate for a roof coating restoration. He worked with Chris Moons, his local KARNAK representative, to determine a system that could provide the protection the buildings needed and offer the association the warranty they desired.

Because the existing roof was asphalt based, they decided to use KARNAK’s 298 Alumin-R. “We chose the 298 because it is asphalt based and the membrane we applied it to was also asphalt based. It’s a good marriage between the two and didn’t need any primers,” explained Littlejohn. “It was also a one-coat application instead of two which saves a tremendous amount of labor.”

Moons says he loves the 298 because he has never had any issues with the product. “It’s a product we’ve had great success with and have never had any callbacks, unlike some of the other products on the market.”

West Coast Florida Enterprises began the job in May and needed to be finished by the end of summer, so they would not be working on the buildings when the snowbird residents returned in the fall. It was a challenge because if you didn’t already know, it rains nearly every day in Florida in the summertime. Each morning the crew had to go onto the roof and use blowers to dry everything.

Over the years the buildings were experiencing some issues with the perimeter – there was no parapet wall, just a drip edge that went down to a sloped metal lower portion. To put an end to those issues, the crew was able to trim the membrane back at the perimeter and install a three-coursed seam using KARNAK 229AR Elastomeric Trowel Grade. They then used 505MS Karna-Flex with Resat Mat around the penetrations and air conditioning stands. The 298 Alumin-R was spray-applied at two-gallons per square foot.

West Coast Florida Enterprises was able to provide the condominium association with a 10-year material and labor warranty on their new, reflective high-performance roofing system; and they completed the job before the snowbirds returned.